Temple family census 1851 .....

Dennis · Post by **Dennis** » Tue Jul 25, 2006 7:38 pm

Hi:)

I just uploaded the 1851 census for the Temple family, which I am having great difficulty in reading.

I'll put the url here once the uploaded image has been approved

Done, - see http://www.talkingscot.com/gallery/albu ... nsus51.tif
David TSAG

dennis

Post by **Liz Turner** » Tue Jul 25, 2006 9:23 pm

Dennis

Writing is pretty obscured but here's my idea:-

James Temple, Head, 45, Brewer??/Labourer, West Lothian, ??
Helen Temple, Wife, 44, West Lothian, Edinburgh
Agnes Temple, Dau, 17, House Servant, West Loth, Edinburgh
James Temple, Son, 15, ??Ironsmith apprentice, West Loth, Edinburgh
Janet Temple, Dau, ??5, Scholar, West Loth, Edinburgh

With any luck some folks with better eye sight will come along and give you their opinions!

All the best.

Liz

Russell · Post by **Russell** » Tue Jul 25, 2006 9:41 pm

Nothing wrong with your eyesight Liz

James (Snr) is a brewers labourer
Son James might be a tinsmith apprentice
Their lodger James ......man aged 31 is a mason's labourer
John Murchie is aged 35 and a Street Porter but where he is from is lost completely. I think the relation to Head of house is 'Do' to match James ....man's entry.

If you got this from scotlandspeople Dennis I would ask them to send you a legible copy. We have found that the info about lodgers has sometimes been useful in establishing othe family relationships or figuring out where a family came from since they sometimes took in relatives or the children of previous neighbours families back in their original village or where their parents still lived.

Russell

Dennis · Post by **Dennis** » Thu Jul 27, 2006 3:28 pm

Hello Liz & Russell:)

I had sent a contact to SP and received the following today:

Thanks for your e-mail. I'm really sorry to have to say that we have
been advised not to send unofficial paper copies of the 1851 census
taken from the actual books, partly for conservation purposes, and also
because the images are in most cases so badly faded that subjecting them
to photocopying won't actually improve the entry at all. The paper
itself is blue, which makes reading even the clearest of handwriting
awkward, but in many instances the entries were written in blue ink.
This has rendered many of them at worst completely illegible, and at
best difficult to decipher. We hope to have some of the problematic
entries re-scanned in the future but in the meantime we are refunding
the customers their credits per entry, as unfortunately there is not
much else we can do at present. I have added 6 credits to your account.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Didn't know it was blue paper. Back to the magnifying glass:)

I do appreciate their explanation

dennis

DavidWW · Post by **DavidWW** » Thu Jul 27, 2006 5:11 pm

Dennis

I'd suggest that you reply to the effect that a photocopy taken direct from the microfilm could well be of better quality than the digitised image ...........

David

Dennis · Post by **Dennis** » Fri Jul 28, 2006 12:06 am

Hi David:)

Thank you. In light of your reply I have sent an email asking if that would be a viable alternative.

dennis

Hello David. Acting on your reply I received the following email today:

Thanks for your reply. Although it is against our current policy (for
conservation reasons) I have managed to locate the 1851 James Temple
entry. Whilst enlarged it is still not particularly good, but you should
be able to make out most if not all of the detail required. I'm afraid
that there is no guarantee that the fiche would be any better in these
instances as this was also taken from the original source - the census
book - and if the original is of a poor quality this will invariably be
passed on to the reproduction, be it fiche or scanned image. In this
instance the entry on the page is written in a very fine hand and in ink
that is so faded you can hardly see it against the blue paper.

I'm not sure why the 1851 census was carried out using blue paper:
certainly this didn't apply to the 1841 census nor the subsequent ones.
However, any census before the statutory period were carried out by the
local parishes and districts, and not by GROS, as the organisation was
not set up until 1855. It's certainly very inconvenient to say the
least: although we plan to rescan many of the troublesome images there
will remain a high percentage for which nothing can be done to improve
them. Some are almost completely faded, leaving the page to look blank.

There is also an additional problem with the 1851 census in that the
districts do not match up with the numbers allocated to them. To use
James Temple as an example, the number allocated is Registration
district 685/1, Enumeration district 002/00 page 006. This number was
chosen to bring the relevant districts in line with all the subsequent
post 1851 census indexes. However, the actual equivalent index number
for 685/1 back in 1851 encompassed districts 723-741, which means that
we have no way of knowing which of the census books between these
numbers James Temple was in! It so happened that on this occasion I got
very lucky, and that the first book I chose (723) to search through was
the one that James was in! This is part of the reason why we are not
really able to search/copy 1851 census records: the only thing we
genuinely had to go on was that James and family were on a page 6!

It is easier to locate smaller districts and parishes, but almost
impossible to find individuals who live in Glasgow or Edinburgh. There
are tens and tens of census books for these areas and, as mentioned
before, no way of finding which is the right one.

At least on this occasion the outcome has been positive, even if I had
to bend the rules a little to do it! I hope the copy arrives soon.

Thanks again David:)

dennis